This video says it all! One of the most significant ways we can simplify the holidays to to first change our focus. Spend less, give more (time relationally and monetarily), celebrate true joy as we focus on worshiping Jesus! Rather than continuing in the $450 billion dollar Christmas industry, we can make a difference by first focusing on others! Why not designate a specific amount of your Christmas budget towards a giving project or two? Why not limit your gift purchases to just one gift per person this Christmas? Many readers shared last week how they liked to follow in the pattern of three gifts as the Wise Men gave Jesus. If Jesus only received three gifts, why should we receive so much more? OR consider giving away three specific gifts to Jesus and be His hands and feet?
There are many ideas out there, but here are just a few family friendly ideas for encouraging a spirit of giving this Christmas:
Samaritan’s Purse Christmas Catalog - several readers shared how these use this tool to focus on giving. Samaritan’s Purse offers a whole list of specific projects of ways you can give and contribute to those who have so much less then us around the world. Projects include anything from helping a disabled child to building a church.
Angel Tree Project – Provide a little joy for children who have a parent in prison.
Operation Christmas Child – This is a fun opportunity to send a shoe box full of love and gifts to a child in a foreign country. We have participated in this on many occasions. National Collection week is November 17-24. This year, families in our church are preparing and sending Ziploc bags filled with such gifts to the Philippines through ACTION missionaries we know there. These bags will be distributed to adults and children through their disaster relief outreach. This past week we had a shopping and packaging party to participate together. IT was such a blast!
Give a Jesus Gift – Our family chose a needy family we know in the church to whom we will give a Jesus gift this year. We are filling a basket full of baked goods, a monetary gift, and small gifts for each of the family members (mainly books and craft supplies). This has been so exciting to plan and scheme how we could bless this family most effectively.
Here is our group packaging Ziploc gifts for the Philippines!
Would you consider prayerfully joining the conspiracy with us? Pray together as a family how you can spend less this Christmas and give more! God may burden each family differently, but we can all give to carry the gift of Christ’s name to the nations around us in some small way.
Stay tuned for more ideas on how to maintain a Christ-centered focus this holiday season!
Every year at our house we celebrate by hosting a Birthday Party for Jesus. We act out the Christmas story with costumes, make gingerbread houses and crafts and then all sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. Every child who comes, brings a gift “for Jesus” for whatever organization we choose for the year. It has been battered womens’ shelters, furniture for refugees, clothes and toys for homeless children. This year it will be pillowcase dresses (pillows that we already tie-dyed) for orphans in Ethiopia that my friend will hand deliver. The party has expanded and now is at my church and we use it as an outreach to our inner-city neighborhood as well. This is the highlight of our Christmas each year.
Has anyone ever tried doing the “12 Days of Christmas” to someone, such as a widow or a struggling family? What a great way to get in the Christmas spirit. There are two or three ways to do it. First way: leave a different treat with a little message on the recipient’s doorstep each night, starting on Dec. 13th and ending on Dec. 24th. Ring the doorbell and run, so they never see who does it. Alternately, on the last night, have everyone involved stand on the doorstep on the last night holding the last gift, so they can see who gave everything to them. Another way is to deliver 1 item the first night, 2 on the second night, etc. So some ideas for that would be: 1 poinsettia (wrapped well), 2 loaves of banana bread, 3 candles, 4 gingerbread men, 5 ornaments, 6 popcorn balls, 7 Christmas stories, 8 pieces of fruit, 9 candy bars, 10 hot chocolate packets, 11 colored candy canes, and finally, 12 sweet rolls. (I got some of these ideas from familycrafts.about.com). This is a great service activity for a youth group. We are doing it this year to an elderly man (using the 12 days of Christmas traditional song as our basis), and I can hardly wait. We are giving him pears, chicken soup, a loaf of French bread, turtles and doves chocolates, a prepaid phone card, a can of pineapple rings, plastic Easter eggs filled with miniature Hershey’s chocolates, homemade bath salts, hot chocolate with various goodies, IcyHot, a box of colored candycanes, a bottle of bubbles with a wand, and cookies in the shape of stars and drums. If anyone would like to see the poems I typed up, email me at [email protected] and I’ll try to send them to you. Merry Christmas!
What a wonderful idea Denise! Thank you so much for sharing! Please send me the poems, I would love to hear more about it. Blessings upon your endeavor to serve others! God bless you!
We did something so fantastic last year that I just had to share it! Instead of hanging up stockings for everyone and filling them with silly little things, we just put up one stocking and pinned a sign on it that said “Happy Birthday Jesus”. During the month of December we all earned money however we could; emptied piggy banks, searched couch cushions, did odd jobs, saved grocery money etc etc and secretly dumped it into our “Jesus Stocking”. We had told my parents not to give the children gifts so instead they have started sending them individual Christmas cards with $100 bill in each for them to give away. When they received their money they put it into the stocking too. On Christmas Eve the children got to dump the contents on the coffee table and start adding it up. It was SO MUCH FUN! Then we got out our Gospel For Asia Gift Catalog (which I highly recommend. All the money goes directly to the gifts, not the ministry expenses) and we all picked out gifts for the poor: buying chickens, goats, gospel tracts etc. It was the best Christmas ever!!
Hi! I live in Mozambique Africa, at a children’s center run by Iris Ministries. We receive these shoe boxes for children! It really is worth doing. I used to do these when I was like 10-12, buying the items with my own money that I had saved. Now I get to be on the other end, handing them to our kids! It’s amazing. We have had Samaritan’s Purse help us in other ways at the center too. They are a great ministry. God bless!
One favorite ways to shop is to attend a local Alternative Gift Market (http://eibisch.blogspot.com/2007/11/holiday-shopping.html). Half of the market is set up so you can donate to causes from saving wildlife to polio to literacy, locally or nationally or internationally. The other half is set up with jewelry, clothing, food, coffee, staues, carvings, etc. made by individuals world wide. The sellers buy them at a decent price and then you buy at that price–no mark up or whatever. Fair trade. y splurge items have always been jewelry and books. These markets are where I get my my jewelry fix.
To me, it is kind of the best of both worlds. You get to learn/be aware of those less fortunate and you get to donate to help, but you can also get a tangible gift to show for your donations and time.
I wanted to send a comment on how powerful Samaritan’s Purse’s Christmas shoe box project can be. We did a box one year (and every year since). A year later we received a letter from the little boy in India that had received our box. We had included a photo, letter, and our address. The boy’s Sunday School teacher wrote the letter for him. THEN we started corresponding via e-mail and snail mail letters. We started to sponsor the boy, who was 11 at the time. Then his Sunday School teacher had the opportunity to visit the US for the first time, and made a side trip to visit us. Brother Joseph is his name. We had an unbelievable visit while he was here, and he hooked up with some friends of our’s that were able to make some things happen.
To make a long story short, Brother Joseph is now running “Good Samaritan’s Home” at http://www.gshministries.blogspot.com/ and 45 children are being taken care of there, being raised in a Christian environment, learning God’s word, going to school, being fed, and having medical care. This November our doctor, his son, and 3 other men from our area and sponsors of Good Samaritan’s Home Ministries (the non-profit organization that my friends started) are traveling to India to visit Brother Joseph, the children, and to see about purchasing property for a new school …and building a larger home so more children can be taken in. This has become an amazing ministry, all because of a Christmas shoebox. PLEASE, if you are able, put a box together for a child in need. At the very least, you will provide a child with probably the most memorable Christmas they’ve ever had by being loved by a stranger. You never know what God will do with the connection.
Another year, we connected with a boy and his family from the Philippines and we are still in contact with them, as well.
GOD BLESS YOU, and thank you for the opportunity to share.
If anyone would like more information on GSH Ministries, you can e-mail me at:
[email protected]. I realized there wasn’t a lot of info on the site. We are working on getting a better, up-to-date site going.
Thank you.
Wow! What a powerful, well done video! I truly hope we all can make a difference. You all have some great ideas. I especially like the idea of donating something in someones name. That’s perfect for the person who has it all, or the co-workers who you have no idea what to get them. Thanks for all the great ideas. Keep ‘em comin’!
Oh and one more thing…my husband gives gifts at Christmas to his customers and last year started making donations in their names instead of some nuts or fruit that they probably don’t like half of anyways.
The Good Samaritan website would be a good way to do that if other’s have husbands who do similar things through work – and you get to it in Christ’s name too which is much better than doing for the sake of “being nice”.
This is great! Thank you so much! We also have chosen in the past years to only do three Christmas gifts each for our children and we have told our parents there is no need to exchange with us…BUT then you start feeling like they buy the kids so much maybe the kids should “get” them something.
I just spent a bit of time on the Good Samaritan website and it looks so fun! I LOVE that we can sit down with our girls and let them pick out what they want to give to others and my husband and I will have to brainstorm but I’m thinking I’d like to see the BIGGEST number of presents under our tree this year to Jesus…so many of the ideas on the website are so small but involving the kids is a great way to serve together and also make them aware about the other needs of children worldwide. Our kids are so blessed and it is really a shame that so many do not realize it.
I look forward to your other posts on this subject! Here’s to LOOKING DIFFERENT!
We LOVE operation christmas child! I was introduced to it several years ago through my MOPS group. SUCH a worthwhile organization and a great way to extend the true love and spirit of Christmas! thanks for sharing. Michelle
We put together an Operation Christmas Child shoebox each year, even though our budget is so limited.
I look for things to put in it all year and our church ships the boxes to Samaritans Purse so it cost very little.
Another idea to throw into the pot is to ask people to donate money in lieu of giving Christmas gifts to you. Instead of sending out long Christmas wish lists, provide ideas for people to give on your behalf.
I like to go through “ADRA’s Really Useful Gift Catalog“: and add some of these items to a wish list. This would be lots of fun to do with kids.
That’s an awesome video. Last year we had our girls both fill a box for Operation Christmas Child, and we also took them shopping to buy some toys for a couple little girls at a local children’s home. I made Alot of gifts last year — ALOT, which was great, but I have to start earlier so I don’t cut into any family time or cause any extra stress. Because even making them if you don’t start early enough making 25+ gifts can become like shopping. So early, I need to start today.
This year we are limiting things even more. Even if we ask, tell them what to get, we can’t stop grandparents from buying the kids too much. So we’ve decided that our girls will get just a few presents from us, we haven’t actually shopped, but we are thinking 3 presents for each of them, one of them being a bigger present (which for a 2 & 4 year old won’t go over $30) Last year we kept finding good deals or would see little things they would like, but then all they wanted was that one present they had actually looked at in the store. This year we also want to reach out to our neighbors more. We want to bake cookies and bag them up with a little card and go around and give them out. Growing up, my parents used to take us out on Christmas Eve taking baked goods to friends and family and I loved that tradition and starting the night by giving to others and having quality time together. I’m so glad you are starting these ideas early, because it gets me thinking about it early and what I need to do to make sure we BEGIN the holiday season in a Christ Centered way.